After almost 10 years across three accounts, I am officially done with Livejournal. Going forward, you can find my posts at my website, and I'm also on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. I'll keep this LJ account active so I can read and comment on a very few journals (Farklebarkle! Buymeaclue!), but other than that, it's time to move on.

I never did get around to posting a report of my own, but to be honest, there wasn’t much too it. Also, I’ve been battling some horrific post-con depression, which I’m not going to go into except to say that it’s difficult to blog when I’m going through that kind of shit.

I’m not a big deal in the writing world, so I know my opinions and actions aren’t much of an influence, but for what it’s worth, I can’t continue to go to Readercon with their decision standing as it is. My going, in my opinion, would make me feel like I’m ok with people being harassed at cons, and that I’m also ok with harassment being taken lightly and/or written off if the harasser is someone who has professional contacts and connections. By continuing to support and attend Readercon, I’d feel like I was both in support of harassment and putting myself out there as someone who doesn’t mind being harassed – because, hey! It’s Readercon! Grope my ass and you’ll just get a little slap yourself, no biggie! Yeah, really, no.

I’m going to buy a membership for Necon next year, and see if I can also swing World Fantasy Con in Brighton. If I can get the time off, I’ll also try to go to Boskone. There are plenty of cons I can and will be happy to attend. Until things change, Readercon won’t be on that list anymore.

Tags:

I don’t do well in hot weather. It’s not just the humidity – thanks to thousands of years of pasty-skinned hobbity ancestors breeding in the cool shadows of snow-capped mountains, I’m simply not genetically equipped to handle hot climates. Which is why I won’t be retiring in Florida. It’s also why I’m approaching today as sort of a battle which I intend to live through but not completely win. I’m a very cranky Cylon, and I have a plan.

Now (mid-80′s): all windows are open, and all fans are on at full-blast. This is the only time of the day in which I’ll get any kind of tolerable breeze, so I’m taking advantage of it. I’m in the ant’s office (hey, it stopped being my room years ago), and from now to about 10am, I’ll be able to write. I’m also going to be making as many ice cubes as possible, because I’ll be drinking water pretty much all day.

10-11am (low 90′s): switch over from Ant Office to bedroom. The AC is in the bedroom, so I’ll drag my office chair in there, and I have a small laptop table that’s set up and ready to go. I will try to keep writing, but will start to mentally short out, and at some point will switch over to reading, or probably watching a movie.

11-12pm (mid-90′s): this is when I close all the windows in my apartment. At this point, it’ll probably be around 92 inside the apartment (the AC basically only cools off the bedroom), and I want to keep it at that level for as long as I can. Lunch will be eating in front of the refrigerator, with the door open as I shove a few things into my mouth before scurrying back into the bedroom.

12-9pm (Furnace time!): it’ll get up to around 98-99 today, with a heat index of around 108, so that means the apartment will probably heat up to around 95. I won’t be able to work. I’ll probably shut off my computer and spend much of this time sleeping, punctuated by reading and quick trips to the fridge for more water and ice. I could go outside and try to find a coffee shop, but so will everyone else in the area, and I don’t need the hassle and stress of fighting over a table at Starbucks. Also, in the five minutes it takes me to go from my apartment to Starbucks, I will burn (despite wearing spf 70 sunscreen).

after 9pm: I’ll start to open the windows again, although I won’t see any kind of temperature drop until four or five the next morning. I’ll force myself to eat something, but I know I won’t be that hungry. I’ll take a shower, maybe watch a few eps of Dexter, look over what I wrote in the morning, go online a bit. I might have one beer, depending on how I feel – alcohol wipes me out when it’s this hot. At some point, I’ll go back to sleep, but I’ll get up again probably around 11pm-12am, and be up for about 3-4 hours. My sleeping is extremely fragmented during the summer, so this is typical. It’s fine, though – it’s amazing how much you can get done in the middle of the night, when everything is so quiet.

Tomorrow will be better. Still horrible, but more normal. Quick morning trips to the grocery store, maybe a walk around the waterfront area in lieu of going to the gym, and then writing for most of the day. This is not the glamorous city life I imagined when I dreamed of moving to New York (is it ever, for anyone?), but for now and until I retire, it is what it is. But I don’t think it’s possible to fully articulate how very much I miss the mountains and the cold.

Tags:

… is non-existent, so I’m going to be free-ranging it. My schedule, such as it is, will consist of making faces at Steve Berman in the book room, falling asleep in the back of panel rooms, throwing hissy-fits because there’s no Starbucks, BURSTING into tears during the Shirley Jackson Awards ceremony, trying to bribe someone to drive me and Robert Levy to whatever bus/subway hellmouth we need to get to on Sunday, and drinking single malt scotch with Nathan Ballingrud (and anyone else who offers, because I’m easy that way). Oh! I also want to go to the Cheesecake Factory, because that place is like how I imagine a restaurant would be if Caligula designed and ran it, and I’m all about ancient history. And, you know, giant slabs of cheesecake.

Tags:

I’m not even going to pretend that I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve posted. I’ve just sort of lost the desire to talk about anything going on in my life, because nothing much is really going on at all, and what little that is going on is rather bleak and depressing. I suspect that it’s going to be like this for as long as I continue to live in that awesomely repulsive apartment.

In the meantime: I’ve signed up for the Clarion Write-A-Thon. I’ll be writing three stories over the six weeks that Clarion is held in San Diego, and posting word counts and excerpts on my write-a-thon profile page. (You are of course welcome to donate – if not to me, then to any of the other 100+ writers listed on the site.) For those of you who also follow me on Twitter, (yes, I’m talking to all five of you!), I’ll also tweet updates there. I probably won’t blog much. I say I will, and then I never do – this should be no surprise to any of you by now.

Tags:

I very, very rarely get reviews of my stories – maybe five or six short mentions on Livejournal over the past eight years, and only one review from a pro-publication (for Locus – Lois Tilton didn’t hate “Her Deepness”). Most of the time, I get hilarious things like this happening. Yes, you should really click on that link and read that review. Because when you’re finished snickering, you’ll then want to go over to Nathan Ballingrud’s blog and read his very in-depth and thoughtful review of what has so far been my most ignored and/or misunderstood story, “and Love shall have no Dominion”.

In other news, “Omphalos” got a nice mention in a review of Best Horror of the Year Volume 4 over on Worlds In Ink.

I think there might have been one other thing I was going to blog about, but it appears I have temporarily ordered my memory off my very own lawn. Yep, I’m going with that.

Tags:

They’ve tapered off, naturally, so I haven’t done this in a while – but it’s nice that a year after publication, the collection is still being reviewed – and I have to say, this is by far the best one to date. Nina Allen, who first mentioned the collection back in February on her blog (yes, you should read that), reviewed Engines for Starburst Magazine. The review will only appear in the print version (#376) of the magazine, however, so unless you live in the UK and can buy a copy locally, you’ll have to order it online through the site if you want to read the entire thing. You should, though – it is truly a fantastic review. A very small snippet is below:

“There are more than a few echoes of Alien in Llewellyn’s visual imagery, a baroque splendour that bloats and burns and rusts and that can most deservedly be called Gigeresque. But it is in the measured way her stories unfold that we sense the advent of classics in the making. Hers is a language that glows with a sense of the forbidden, that resonates with the heartbeat of the darkly divine. …Engines of Desire is the bravest and most exciting collection of dark fantasy I’ve read in some years…”

Looking at the very formidable competition, which is sort of crushing me even now, all I can say is I’m glad I was nominated, and many thanks to the jurors for their consideration. Also, I have to once again thank Steve Berman and everyone Lethe Press for publishing Engines and “Omphalos”. I feel like I won when I first got my arcs, so everything after that has been icing on the cake.

Tags:

Actually, I think most of the insects have been washed away by the nor’ester blowing through here. Anyway, over on Underwords (ha!), Erin Underwood has posted a group interview of many of the contributors to Best Horror of the Year Volume 4.

Back to celebrating this beautiful day dedicated to respecting our planet and its precious resources by beating the shit out of some silverfish. Then: dinner and cake!

Tags:

Marine Autumn

I owe you marine autumnWith dankness at its rootsand fog like a grapeand the graceful sun of the country;and the silent spacein which sorrows lose themselvesand only the bright crownof joy comes to the surface.